GUIDANCE FOR CONTRIBUTORS

The Archaeological Journal
NOTES FOR THE GUIDANCE OF CONTRIBUTORS
(Revised March 2009)

INTRODUCTION

The Archaeological Journal is published annually, complete in one issue. Papers of any length may be submitted for consideration at any time. Prospective authors should be aware that papers published in The Archaeological Journal are subject to peer review. Papers submitted for consideration are read by external referees whose comments may remain confidential.

Acceptance of a contribution implies the formal transfer of copyright in that contribution to the Royal Archaeological Institute, and authors may expect to sign a paper to this effect. The Institute will normally grant permission to authors, or their executors, for a contribution to be reprinted in whole or in part elsewhere after it has appeared in the Journal.

In return for the assignation of copyright authors receive 25 offprints free of charge and may order any additional quantity at their own expense. Additional orders may be placed at proof stage.

TEXTS

All copy (including quotations, appendices, lists, bibliographies and captions) must be printed with double spacing, on one side of the paper only, and allowing wide margins. The font size should be 12 point. All pages must be numbered. A single copy of the typescript should be submitted, but authors are recommended to retain a duplicate copy. Papers must be accompanied by a scheme indicating the divisions of the text and the relative importance of the various headings, subheadings, etc. The main text should be preceded by a summary of about one hundred words. The summary should not include references or refer to illustrations within the article itself. A copy on disk of the final draft of the text is required.

Both line drawings and photographs will be numbered in a single sequence within each paper and should be given a number in the text, thus (Illus. 9). Photographs are integrated within the text and should not be numbered separately. Please note in the margins where you wish illustrations to be placed.

The beginning of each paragraph, except for the first after a heading or subheading, must be indented one tab space.

STYLE

Introduction

The rules laid out here are based substantially upon the MHRA Style Book, the Concise Oxford English Dictionary (tenth edition). The guide here is intended to provide (i) a ready guide to practice, (ii) further detail on the implementation of rules, and (iii) points at which RAI practice diverges from that detailed in the MHRA Style Book. Where appropriate the guidance refers to the relevant place in the Style Book, thus [MHRA 5.5].

Spelling

The Archaeological Journal, in common with many academic journals, has a conservative approach to spelling and the use of expressions. Contractions which are now used in some printed texts, including can’t, wouldn’t and couldn’t, remain unacceptable.

The greatest area of divergence between academic English and common usage is in the retention of spellings in –ize. A small number of words, including analyse, exercise and surprise, are spelled with –ise or -yse, because of their derivation. The Concise Oxford Dictionary provides guidance in cases of doubt [MHRA 4.1]. Computer spell-checkers do not always provide the correct form of spelling, and in any case should be set to UK English.

Generally speaking, foreign words adopted into the English language are printed without accents and in normal roman script. Expressions which are still felt to be foreign are given accents and are italicized. The only exception is words ending with a final é accent retain all accents, but appear in roman characters [MHRA 4.2].

It is a nice judgement to determine whether a word is used sufficiently often to have become anglicized.

Expressions and words which are normally printed in italics in the Journal include:

Grubenhaus (plural Grubenhäuser)
Terminus post quem and Terminus ante quem (where possible they should be avoided as they can be confusing).

Place-names

The preferred spelling of British place-names is that used by the Ordnance Survey in the most recent editions. Names which have been lost (no longer in current usage), or for which an archaic form is used, should be italicized. For example, Verulamium and Hamwic should be italicized.

Where the location of a place is not well known, it should be accompanied by the modern administrative county, pre-1974 county if different and, if appropriate, the parish name when first used. A gazetteer of pre-1974 place names is given at www.abcounties.co.uk.

Anglicized forms of foreign names should be used where common (Rheims rather than Reims, Vienna rather than Wien, Cardiff rather than Caerdyff). Otherwise, current foreign forms should be adopted.

American states and Canadian provinces are abbreviated to two letters without stops.

10.

Hyphens

Compound adjectives are usually hyphenated. Note the difference between
in the tenth century and
the tenth-century manuscript

Adjectives ending in –ly are not hyphenated

The prefix ‘mid’ is always hyphenated. Note the difference between
in the mid-fifth century and
in the early fifth century

There is a general tendency for compound words in common use to drop their hyphens, but the definition of common use is not entirely clear. Since no overall rules apply, it seems sensible to follow the advice of the MHRA: consult OED and be consistent.

Compass directions which lie between the cardinal points are hyphenated — north-east wind, north-north-west aspect. Note also: north-west / south-east Compass directions are not given with capitals unless abbreviated. Compass directions should normally not be abbreviated, unless the repetition of directions makes the text unwieldy.

11.

Use of capital letters

Initial capital letters are used for the following:

the titles of individuals and place-names when referring to named individuals, including where they are contracted –
King William II visited Glastonbury Abbey where he met the abbot.
The King addressed his earls in the church of the abbey.
The River Ouse

the names of eras e.g. the Anglo-Saxon period and the Middle Bronze Age, but not more general time frames, including the prehistoric period and the medieval period

when such eras are used adjectivally, including Anglo-Saxon pottery and Neolithic causewayed enclosures [contra MHRA 7.5]

Terms of Art, including the Middle Ages, the Continent and Old English

for specific geological deposits, such as the Lower Chalk, but not for geological terms in common use, including chalk, sandstone and brickearth

for specific botanical terms, such as Puccinellia maritima and Sea purslane, but not for plant names in common use, such as holly and bracken

for specific artefact types, where there might otherwise be ambiguity. Peterborough Ware and Border Ware are capitalized, because in the first case, it is understood that not all such pieces of pottery originated at Peterborough, and in the second, it is being used as a Term of Art

when using a common noun as a proper noun in, for example, Room 17, Table 4 (when it occurs in the article) or Building 2

12.

Abbreviations, contractions and symbols

A clear distinction needs to be made between:
Abbreviations. The final letter of an abbreviation is different from the final letter of the full word. The abbreviation has a full stop such as: a.m., c., illus. (when singular), etc. Contractions. The final letter is the same as the final letter of the word. Contractions do not have a full stop, e.g. Dr, Mr, illus (when a plural).

Commonly used abbreviations may be given without full stops — AD, BL, VCH [institution], HMSO. Less well-known organizations may be abbreviated in a similar manner after giving the first citation in full — Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England: RCHME. Abbreviations should be given in italics if the full word would also have appeared in italics — SPQR, VCH Sussex [book]. Where there is doubt about the widespread use of an abbreviation, it should be spelled out in the first citation.

Abbreviations using the lower case should always appear with stops to avoid ambiguity: c. pl., pp., e.g. (except measurements — see below)

Abbreviations and contractions can often be avoided and i.e. and e.g. should not be used whenever they may be conveniently omitted.

Commonly used Latin words and abbreviations are no longer italicized —
cf., et al., ibid., viz.

Less commonly used Latin abbreviations, and other abbreviations to avoid ambiguity, remain italicized: c., s.v., in situ

In citing the works of others, use fig. and illus., fig., tab. etc (lower case), but drawings and illustrations are always cited as Illus. (upper case initial letter) when they occur in the same article.

The following categories are not abbreviated, unless necessary in, for example, tables:
compass directions
days of the week
months of the year

Ordinals are spelled out (second, not 2nd) and in any case should never appear in upper case. Dates should appear in the following form — 5 November 2003.

13.

Personal names

Names of living people should be accompanied by their title when first mentioned. Initials of personal names are followed by a full stop and a space.— Prof. B. W. Cunliffe. In subsequent usage it is usually sufficient to refer to a person by their surname.

14.

Symbols

The following symbols are not used —
& [ampersand], [Tyronian ‘and’], #,

The following symbols may be used —
%, ° [degree of temperature or degrees of angle]

15.

Numbers

All numbers, up to and including one hundred, and round numbers of hundreds, thousands and millions should be spelled out, unless they are measurements —
fifty-eight monks, 58 mm, five hundred books, 515 books
The main exceptions to this rule are page numbers and dates.

Numbers below 9999 are written without a comma. Those above take commas separating groups of three digits.

The numeral in measurements should always be separated by a space from the type of unit — 3 km.

Roman numerals are not used, except for:

Roman legions

ordinals of kings and popes

(in lower case) for prefatory page numbers in books where the original is in roman numerals

certain expressions, such as World War II

acts of plays

certain documentary references, for example BL, Cotton MS Vitellius E XIV

Note that published volume numbers of journals and series should never be given using roman numerals.

16.

Measurements

The SI standard units for distance are the kilometre, metre and the millimetre; the hectare (ha) for area; the tonne, kilogramme (kg) and gram (g) for weight, litre and cubic (l) centimetre (cc). Where measurements have been taken to the nearest centimetre and a spurious claim to greater accuracy might be implied by expressing them in millimetres, they may be rendered as two decimal places of a metre, e.g. 0.35 m instead of 350 mm.

In cases where measurements have been made in Imperial units or where the use of Imperial dimensions greatly facilitates comparison with previous literature, they may be used in the text, but metric equivalents should be given in brackets immediately following, e.g. 4 ft 6½ in. by 1 ft 9 in. (1.38 x 0.53 m). In quotations from other authors using only Imperial units, metric equivalents should be inserted in square brackets, for example [1.38 x 0.53 m]. Note the spacing and punctuation in these examples. Uniquely, inch is abbreviated with a full stop to avoid ambiguity.

Measurements should be given in the form 1.5 m by 0.9 m — not 1.50 m by 0.90 m, but for exact measurements as 1.0 m.

Ranges can be in the form 0.5 – 0.65 m

17.

Currency

Round sums of money should be spelled out —
five hundred dollars For other sums, pre-decimal British currency should be expressed in the following form —
£3 13s. 4d., 6s. 8d.

Decimal British and foreign currency should be expressed in the following forms —
£123.34, 34p, $500, DM 25, €34.50, 8 F
Note the spacing and position of the symbol.

18.

Dates

Recent dates should appear in the following form —
5 November 2003

Dates which fall within a regnal year and across a calendar year may be expressed as —
1221/2

A specific date falling within a date-range is shown in historical writing as —
1221×25

Ranges of dates are expressed in the shortest form without ambiguity —
1221–5, 1221–35, AD 43, 150–100 BC, a first- to second-century brooch.

Decades are expressed without the use of the apostrophe —
1850s

The use of the slash should not be used for alternatives, except in the instance shown above.

19.

Radiocarbon dates

Radiocarbon dates should always be cited together with their laboratory reference number and should be presented in the following format using the INTCAL98 calibration published in the journal Radiocarbon 40 (1998) or the OxCal calibration published in Radiocarbon 37 (1995) and should state the probability level used.

Earlier calibrations are not acceptable. Advice on recalibrating dates may be obtained from the laboratory which provided the dates. It is also good practice to indicate the material and context from which the sample was taken.

In many cases it will be most appropriate to collect this information into a single table, which may take a number of formats. An example is given below:

For date number Q 3047:

the uncalibrated date is 2945 ± 40 ¹⁴C BP (Q-3047)

the calibrated date is 1250–1230 cal. BC (Q-3047) at the 68 per cent probability level.

or 1305–1280 cal. BC (Q-3047) at the 95 per cent probability level.

Please note the punctuation and capitalization used.

Date derived from dendrochronological determination should give the error margin and laboratory reference number.

20.

Addresses

Addresses are given in the following form:
181–3 High Street, Grantchester

Note the use of a single digit after the hyphen and the absence of a comma after the number.

21.

Citations and bibliographies

21.1

General

Only works cited should be listed in the bibliography. Page numbers of articles etc should refer to the whole of the article, not just the passage of interest.

The Archaeological Journal uses only Harvard-style references. It does not use footnotes. Authors are cited in date order, separated by semi-colons, and if there are multiple instances of the same author, they are further ordered by chronology —
(Collis 1989, 14; Cunliffe 1975; 1983, 21)

Citation of more than two authors should be in the form Everson et al. — all authors to be listed in the bibliography.

In the bibliography, Mc and Mac should both be treated as if they are Mac. St should be listed as if spelled Saint.

Foreign names such as de, von, van etc are usually lower case, except in anglicized names.
Goethe, J. W. von
Klerk, P. W. de
De Quincey, T. [list under ‘Q’]

Note that the bibliography always follows the appendices.

21.2

Documentary sources

The list of references is organized in the following order at the end of the article:
Unpublished documentary sources
Published documentary sources
Published works

Unpublished works
Published works

Manuscript sources
Unpublished
Published

Textual sources
Unpublished
Published

Where there are few unpublished works, it is often convenient to include them in a single list with the published works.

Unpublished documents are listed in the references as follows —

Leicestershire Record Office

Leics. R. O., 15D55/26a Specification for new pewing and putting in new galleries to Appleby Church, undated

Note the use of the comma after the repository and the date (or reference to the fact that it is undated) at the end of the description. Note that many record repositories have a standard abbreviation — such as the BL for British Library — and this should be used in preference to any other. Note that no points are used where all words are abbreviated with initial letters.

There are some problems in the citation of modern publication of historic documents. Works with distinctive or well known titles present few problems and may be abbreviated. Longer titles may be necessary where the first part is not distinctive and is not readily susceptible to abbreviation —

Feet of Fines of Sussex An Abstract of Feet of Fines relating to the county of Sussex from 2 Richard I to 33 Henry III (Sussex Record Society 2), ed. L. F. Salzmann, Lewes, Sussex Record Society, 1903

Red Book of Worcester The Red Book of Worcester, ed. M. Hollings, four vols, Worcester: Worcester Historical Society, 1934–50

Rot. Hund. Rotuli Hundredorum Tempore Henrici III et Edwardi I, ed. W. Illingworth and J. Caley, two vols, London: Record Commissioners, 1812–18

21.3

Other works

Literary works should be separately listed before other published works and cited using the author and short title. Titles may contain abbreviations, if appropriate —

Alberti, On Architecture Alberti, L. B., Ten Books on Architecture (trans. J. Leoni), 1955, London: Tiranti

Bede, Hist. Ecc. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum (ed. C. Plummer), 1896, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Homer, Iliad Homer, The Iliad (trans. R. A. Lattimore), 1951, Chicago: University of Chicago Press

Journal and monograph series titles should be abbreviated according to the principles laid down in British Standard 4148 Abbreviations of Title Words and Titles of Publications (1985); a list of abbreviations of periodical titles is included in Signposts for Archaeological Publication, but note that it is RAI practice to use stops after abbreviations.

Note the following:

Monograph and Fascicule Series

Cunliffe, B. 2001. Mount Batten, Plymouth. A Prehistoric and Roman Port, Oxford: Oxford University Comm. Archaeol. Monogr., 26

Inker, P. 2006. The Anglo-Saxon Relief Style, Oxford: Brit. Archaeol. Rep. Brit. Ser., 410

Neal, D. S. 1974. The Excavation of the Roman villa in Gadebridge Park, Hemel Hempstead, London: Res. Rep. Soc. Antiqs, 31

Ford, S. 1987. Chronological and functional aspects of flint assemblages, in A. Brown and M. Edmonds (eds) Lithic Analysis and Later British Prehistory, 67–85, Oxford: Brit. Archaeol. Rep., Brit. Ser., 162

Briden, C. M. and Stocker, D. A. 1987. The tower of the church of St Mary Bishophill Junior, in L. P. Wenham, R. A. Hall, C. M. Briden and D. A. Stocker, St Mary Bishophill Junior and St Mary Castlegate, Archaeol. York 8/2, 84–146, London: Counc. Brit. Archaeol.

Gittos, B. and Gittos, M. 1989. A survey of East Riding sepulchral monuments before 1500, in C. Wilson, (ed.) Medieval Art and Architecture in the East Riding of Yorkshire, Brit. Archaeol. Assoc. Conference Trans, 9, 91–108, London: Brit. Archaeol. Assoc.

Journal Articles

Dudley, D. 1961. The excavation of the Otterham barrow, Cornwall, J. Royal Inst. Cornwall, 4, part 1, 62–80

Jobey, G. 1977. A food vessel burial at Dour Hill, Byrness, Northumberland, Archaeol. Aeliana, fifth ser., 5, 204–207

Allan, J. P. 1984. The pottery, in D. M. Griffiths and F. M. Griffith, An excavation at 39 Fore Street, Totnes, Proc. Devon Archaeol. Soc., 42, 79–94

Books

Alexander, J. J. G. 1978. A Survey of the Illuminated Manuscripts of the British Isles, 1, Insular Manuscripts from the 6th to the 9th Century, London: Harvey Miller

Allison, K. J. (ed.) 1976. Victoria History of the County of York: East Riding, 3, Oxford: Oxford University Press

MacKie, E. W. 1974. Dun Mor Vaul: An Iron Age Broch on Tiree, Glasgow: Glasgow University Press

Contributions in books

Jones, G. D. B. and Lewis, P. R. 1974. Mining and the environment, in P. A. Rahtz (ed.) Rescue Archaeology, 130–46, London: Penguin

Unpublished reports and theses should appear in the following form and should normally be included among the published works.

Unpublished theses

Riall, N. 2003. Bringing the Renaissance to Tudor England: The role of Richard Fox and his Frieze at St Cross, Winchester, unpublished Ph D thesis, University of Wales at Swansea

Unpublished reports or ‘grey literature’/I>

Baker, N. 2004. A Watching Brief on Mardol Head, Shrewsbury: Excavations for the Darwin Gate, Shropshire Archaeology Service, Rep. 20
Optional, add location if known, e.g. for the above: copy in Shropshire HER, Shrewsbury

For references in the bibliography to a book or monograph with numerous contributions the preferred practice is as follows.

For a single reference:
Reece, R. 2002. Roman coins and pots in fifth-century Britain, in G. Faulkner (ed.) A History of Money, 72–75, London: Routledge

However, if there is more than one reference to the papers etc the parent volume should be cited:
Manby, T. G., Moorhouse, S. and Ottaway, P. 2003. The Archaeology of Yorkshire: An Assessment at the Beginning of the Twenty-first Century, Yorkshire Archaeol. Soc. Occ. Pap., 3

and the following form adopted for each reference:
Moorhouse, S. 2003. Medieval Yorkshire: a rural landscape for the future, in Manby et al. 2003, 181–214

ILLUSTRATIONS

22.

The responsibility for supplying all illustrations rests with the contributors. The Editor cannot undertake to obtain published photographs etc., on their behalf. Where questions of copyright are involved, contributors must obtain the necessary permission well in advance of publication.

23.

Illustrations only of the highest quality may be published. For photographs a glossy print is acceptable, although, where possible, they should be provided in digital format. Line illustrations should be submitted in digital format with a hard copy and not as drawings on film or other media; authors are advised to discuss appropriate format with the Editor in advance of final submission.

24.

Useful Information / Definitions. The description greyscale (or US grayscale), which is used by most graphic software is equivalent to halftone in printing terms, and applies to any monochrome image which contains shades of grey other than 100% solid black and pure white: e.g. a photograph.

The term line is used for images made up of areas, or lines, of solid black and white: e.g. a plan or an elevation. (Note that the inclusion of a simple patch of grey, however small, in such an image defines it greyscale.)

The print area of an Archaeological Journal page is 190 x 130 mm. Bearing in mind the fact that a caption will accompany it, the area available for an illustration is approximately 175 x 130 mm or 190 x 120 mm in the case of a ‘landscape’ page. This should be taken into account when preparing line drawings and when recommending reductions. Pullout illustrations should be avoided wherever possible. Where they appear unavoidable, the Editor should be consulted before final submission of the artwork. Ensure that scales (either metric or dual standard) and north points are included where required and that everything which appears on the drawing (trench numbers, room numbers, and so on) relates clearly and consistently to what is said in the text.

25.

Captions for all the illustrations in an article should be presented together on a sheet or sheets of paper separate from the text and submitted as a separate file on disk.

26.

File Format. Please supply all images (whether line or greyscale) as TIFFs or highest-quality JPEGS. Most CAD, drawing, and photo-editing software permits saving (or ‘exporting’) in at least one of these file-types. Do not supply ‘native’ files of the software used (e.g. Autocad or Photoshop): unless the editor and printer happen to have the same version of the same software they will not be able to use them.

27.

Resolution. The Journal’s printer works with both greyscale and colour images at 350 dpi (dots per inch) at the size at which they are to appear in the journal. Line images must be at least 1000 dpi, also at their intended appearing size, in order not to reveal stepping (the appearance of being made up of blocks) on curves and diagonals.

To bring this about, images must be scanned, photographed, or computer-drawn at at least these resolutions.

As an image is enlarged or reduced its true resolution decreases or increases in simple inverse proportion to the change in its linear size. So if, for instance, a 60 mm-wide greyscale image is to be printed 120 mm wide at 350 dpi, it must be scanned or photographed at at least 700 dpi. (There is no benefit to be gained from taking a low-resolution image and specifying a higher resolution when saving it.)

The printer can reduce, but not increase, the resolution of images supplied. So always err on the large side when fixing file sizes.

28.

Embedded Images. In no circumstances should images be supplied for publications embedded in text documents or other secondary files, such as PDF documents, word-processor files (e.g. Word), spreadsheets (e.g. Excel), Powerpoint presentations, databases (e.g. Access), or desktop-publisher files (e.g. PageMaker, Publisher, QuarkXpress). In all such cases the image pre-exists the final file in a graphic form and it is in that form, or a TIFF or JPEG derived directly from that form, that it should be submitted.

The printer may be able to extract an image from some of the above document types but there can be no certainty that the quality of the extracted image matches that of the original image file embedded.

29.

Seeking advice. That an image looks acceptable on a computer screen, or prints satisfactorily on a laser or inkjet printer, does not guarantee that it will print well in the journal. If in doubt, send a sample image to the editor at as early a stage as possible. He will discuss it with the printer and let you know if any adjustment needs to be made.

TABLES

30.

Tables must be provided in a separate file from the main text. Authors should indicate their approximate position in pencil in the margin of the text. Tables should normally be submitted as a separate file and as a word document rather than in Excel or other formats.

Try to present tables in as simple a form as possible. The printer will impose the journal’s style on them. Consider whether the table proposed can be fitted into the journal’s page format without reducing the type to an illegibly small size. Always number tables however small and refer to them in the text by their numbers.

Position columns by using single tabs. Multiple spaces or combinations of tabs and spaces merely increases the work which must take place before the table can be set in type.

PROOFS

31.

Typescripts should be very carefully checked before they are forwarded to the Editor. Alterations at proof stage are now so costly that the Editor will be able to permit them only in exceptional circumstances. He will not be unsympathetic towards alterations arising out of new research, although these may have to appear in the form of a postscript. The cost of any other alterations may have to be charged to the contributor. One set of proofs will be sent to contributors, but this is intended only to ensure the elimination of printer's errors.

32.

If proofs are not returned by the date requested, the issue may go to press without author's corrections.

PUBLICATION GRANTS

33.

It is expected that articles which result from archaeological or architectural recording which have been funded by English Heritage, CADW, Historic Scotland and DoENI, and by developers as part of the development process will be supported by grants towards the publication costs. Authors should confirm in writing that their papers will receive a grant at the time of submission.

Patrick Ottaway (Hon. Editor), March 2009

Download a copy of the Notes for the Guidance of Contributors